Shoppers are mixing the high tech with the high street and a new concept, the
‘dark store’. Matt Warman reports.

Imagine a supermarket with no customers, no garish advertising, and not even a checkout to hamper your exit. Tesco has five, but you’ll never have noticed them, either on the high street or even on a faceless retail park.

That’s because the typical customer isn’t allowed into one of these so-called ‘dark stores’. They exist purely to serve the needs of an insatiable public’s appetite for online shopping. The latest, opened this week in Crawley, created 700 jobs and offers a sharp contrast to the doom and gloom of BlockBuster, HMV and other recent closures.

It’s technology that is rapidly reshaping the high street – although high rents have not helped, it’s changing consumer behaviour that has had the most impact. Some of this is down to the phenomenon dubbed ‘showrooming’, in which people use their phones while out shopping to examine whether their prospective purchases are available cheaper online or elsewhere. Turning shops into showrooms for the internet is an unsurprising consequence of straitened times, and 25 per cent of consumers did it in the run up to Christmas. According to the survey by design agency Foolproof, four out of ten of those ‘showroomers’ then ended up making their purchases elsewhere. Indeed, one in five people said they only went into a shop to ‘check out’ something they planned to buy online. And perhaps most worryingly for the future, at four in 10 twice as many of the under-40s said that they ‘showroomed’ compared to those over 40.

Those figures, however, demonstrate that consumers still value what the high street can offer – the chance to inspect what they’re thinking of buying – as well as the new openness of the internet.

Consultants Accenture estimate that changing consumer behaviour will generate growth across 20 different sectors amounting to £1.5trillion by 2016. But they also note that three quarters of business executives admit to not understanding the changes and four out of five admit to failing to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by such new technology.

In a report subtitled “Understanding the changing consumer”, Accenture observes, “Consumers are increasingly ‘connected’ - often online, interacting with companies and other consumers to research and purchase products, share advice, and praise or criticize a business. Nearly three-quarters of the consumers surveyed said they use the internet to research or purchase products or services more than they did three years ago. Consumers are also increasingly using social media as a tool in the purchasing process.”

Reflecting that directly on the high street itself, however, is a challenge for brands and consumers. Brent Hoberman, the co-founder of lastminute.com and now of online furniture retailer made.com, argues that technology can strengthen both aspects.

“In the near future we’re going to see an awful lot of visualisation technology,” he says. “Returns with sofas were often because people couldn’t fit it through the door, but we’re going to see people uploading floorplans of their houses so that we know how everything will fit in. And augmented reality means that we will be able to see what items will look like in place, too”.

But even made.com has a showroom. “It’s currently on the 9th floor in Notting Hill Gate,” says Hoberman, “and it’s a very small percentage of shoppers who visit it. But there’s something reassuring for customers knowing we have a physical presence.” Hoberman says that he thinks high street outlets will essentially be advertising for a brand, which will then allow users to shop online in store. “Big shops will become sort of brand cathedrals,” he argues.

For the high street itself, that means small shops partnering with larger suppliers, so that they can tailor what is offered to very local areas but benefit from the global market. “A combination of more flexible retail spaces, short lets and partnerships will mean in some senses the high street will be more connected but look more local,” he says.

Making the internet tangible is a challenge that some companies are meeting simply by building gadgets. In South Korea, for instance, takeaway food suppliers have launched a button, wirelessly connected to a user’s phone that people, can stick on their fridge. Press it and your favourite takeaway automatically delivers your favourite pizza. Little matter that it could just be a button on a smartphone screen.

With so many possibilities, however, people who are actually building the high street of the future have to make some big bets. At the Battersea Power Station development, opening from 2016 but not finished until 2024, the developers must plan what they think shoppers will actually want.

“It’s clear that as online shopping has grown in popularity so planners, developers and retailers are going to have to work harder and harder to bring people into town centres and retail developments,” says Rob Tincknell, Battersea’s Chief Executive.

“High Street shopping needs to evolve so visitors are offered not just a variety of shops, but also a variety of recreational opportunities. That means shops, cafes, galleries and restaurants side by side and framed with architecture and landscaping that make it a stimulating and rewarding place to visit.”

And anyway, says Tincknell, ‘showrooming’ is here to stay: “Shops themselves will need to evolve to serve a generation of customers who may well want visit a shop in order to experience the product - but will ultimately transact online.”